Carey Mercer

Born :

1975

The whole idea of civilization as an understandable narrative is a bit nuts. It's the most problematic of delusions.

delusion

You don't expect people to go, "music has just been reinvented!" But the hope is that people won't say, "this is the most boring cliché." I mean, that's one of my pursuits, is trying to not become a cliché, or get stuck in that. But even that's a cliché in itself! It's difficult! But I think it's worth it.... It's a real vicious circle there.

real mean thinking

Ten people who are into our music is better than three hundred people who are just standing there.

music-is people

Tour is disgusting, actually, I have no idea how people do it. Your brain would go to rot, unless you really, really worked hard at making sure it didn't.

disgusting brain people

It's pretty awesome to be in a band with your wife! The tour, it beats you down, and we can just share that, and sometimes revel in the experience. If she wasn't here, or she was just here as a civilian, she maybe would feel uncomfortable.

wife share sometimes

We're a live band. Some bands write their songs in the studio - we don't do that. We're playing songs on this tour that were written three days before the tour. And it feels good to try these songs.

feel-good writing song

Live is best. You have movement, and I think we should do as much as we can to put that sense of movement in the recorded music.

thinking

An acceptance of your cultural inheritance, and at the same time a dislike of it, is a building block of good art.

block acceptance art

We hate our heroes, you know. That's one of the great things about this whole deconstruction thing - there's no more heroes. It's always been there, you just look at people's reactions, and when the good guys are skunks, those parts stick with us.

guy hate hero

People are intended to resist symbolic interpretation, as well. At times, they break through - there are little hints of 'this song is about this,' but if you were to come here and be like, 'well, I've got the lyrics right here, let's go through 'em,' that wouldn't really work!

break song people

It's like, symbolic language, the way that people approach dense poetry... it always bugs me, because that approach suggests that it's like a mystery novel, and that if you can put together the clues, you can come up with one singular answer.

language together people

I find listening to music in terms of influences, and trying to keep up with what's going on, is sickening! I mean, I'm not deliberately musically illiterate. But I have a pretty serendipitous approach to it.

listening trying mean

These are things that I continue to enjoy speaking about. The woods. Boats. Greeks. I think the real heart of it, is really being in love with these Dutch paintings over the last several years.

being-in-love real heart

Bruegel has these paintings of people just... interacting with each other. And there's this special wink - it's not a celebration of nature, it's people that are mongrels, and half-wits, and they're doing terrible things. I don't know, it just seems like something worth singing about.

singing special people

It's sort of cheesy to introduce that to the drums - those dings and dongs and bell sounds. That's definitely one of the reasons people are like 'oh yeah, they sound like Tom Waits, with those trashcan drums.' But at the same time, it sounds so good! And it introduces this... I mean, it's not tuned, but somehow it adds this extra layer of melodic texture.

waiting mean people

One thing I've always been proud of is that vicious dichotomy between the pretty controlled, angular playing of the band, and my - I don't want to talk about myself as a 'wild man' or anything, but I have trouble staying on the beat.

dichotomy proud trouble

I'm really happy that people are starting to hear my band, and we are so happy to be conduits for all this other happiness, and this emotional response. So, I can't be like, "that doesn't matter to me, I'm an artist, I exist apart from that!" But on the other hand, if you buy into that too much, you're setting yourself up... if I start thinking, "well, people at the show really liked one song, maybe I should write more songs like that," then I'm in trouble.

writing song thinking